You Can’t Run a Marathon with a Sprinter’s Attitude

A theme that has been coming up lately with my clients and others I’ve been talking to about their health and fitness is that we need to start looking at our health as a marathon rather than a sprint.

If you are a sprinter and you run a 100-meter dash, there is little room for error. Everything has to be almost perfect and you can’t make any mistakes because they will cost you tremendously, granted it’s such a short distance. On the other hand, a marathon race is 26.2 miles. There’s time to take a sip of water and even make a few mistakes along the way. You can pick up the pace when you need to and slow down a little when you need to recover. You never stop, though. You just try to keep a good pace and run a good race.

I’ve mentioned exercise tools that promise huge results with minimal effort, fad diets, liposuction, and other such gimmicky ideas. I’m not interested in the quick fix because you don’t build good habits and change behaviors that way. Instead, my way of coaching goes much deeper. It goes past the brain and into the heart of the matter, so to speak.

I want my clients to fail regularly because it’s only when we fail where we are able to understand ourselves. Think about some hard times you’ve had in your life. You get stronger and wiser through hardships. It’s important to learn who we are and why we do what we do through those tough times. It’s vital to our long-term vision of ourselves to fall, but to ever so gently and compassionately pick ourselves up and start again.

I encourage you today, as we are still entering the second half of the year to take a marathoner’s approach to your health and fitness as opposed to a sprinter. Understand that a longer journey allows room for error as long as you do your best to keep the pace and persevere. There will be times when you slow and take a sip of water to rest and recover, but it’s only for a moment. There will be other times when you need to redirect, refocus and pick up the pace, especially after a stumble.

This week, think of your own race. Is your race a sprint or a marathon? Are you running a marathon with a marathoner’s attitude? When you stumble, are you gentle and forgiving with yourself remembering that you are not out of the race even though you lost your footing? Have you been recovering and resting too much and need to pick up the pace? How will you commit to running your race the rest of the year?

I would love to hear your thoughts. Head over to my Facebook page and let’s chat about where you are on your journey.

Kim